Insurance

We have a dedicated team of specialists who have previous experience in advising underwriters, intermediaries, brokers and aggregators on all aspects of insurance (e.g. GI, Pure Protection, Commercial). Whether it’s reviewing your approach to sales, your approach to claims handling, conducting periodic compliance reviews, or offering expert advice on how to improve policies and procedures, our team of specialists can help.

Our team of regulatory specialists includes subject matter experts with a mixture of industry (personal and commercial lines) and regulator experience. This allows us to be pragmatic and tailor what the right approach is for each client we work with, taking into account the nature, scale and complexity of your firm.

Our support can be agile and tailored to your needs with as little or as much support as you need. Our services include, but are not limited to:

Periodic reviews

Whether as part of your compliance monitoring or internal audit programme, we can support you with independent assurance on the design and operational effectiveness of your approach. This could be in relation to anything from product design and pricing, sales, all the way through to claims handling.

Staff training

We can conduct tailored complaints training, which focuses on the FCA’s expectations. Alternatively, we can review your training material to verify if this is sufficient and catered appropriately to staff at differing levels of seniority. We can also review whether your route to competency framework is effective by design, but also operationally effective.

Product governance

We can review your firm’s approach to product governance, including but not limited to reviewing your product governance framework (policy/procedures), target market assessments, design effectiveness of customer documentation, product performance MI metrics and thresholds (including whether this is of sufficient granularity), reporting and governance and product assessments. Additionally, we can review your firm’s role in the distribution chain and the risks posed by this. For example, we can analyse the risks posed by your role as a distributor, manufacturer, co-manufacturer, or all of the above.

Insurance sales

We can conduct a review of your full sales journey, or any one particular part of your sales journey. This includes but is not limited to customer engagement with marketing/financial promotions, website sales journeys, price comparison website journeys, telephony sales journeys for new customer sales, the sale of add-on products, mid-term amendments for existing customers, renewals for existing customers and cancellations where applicable.

Actuarial/pricing

We can review whether you are meeting the FCA/PRA’s pricing practices, including accurate communication of last year’s premium on renewals, reviewing modelling of premium rates, comparing the modelled premium rates with other similar products in the market and assessing these against the FCA’s Consumer Duty price and value outcome.

Claims

We can review your firms approach to claims handling, including but not limited to reviewing call scripts, telephone calls, triage processes, liability decisions, management information and governance, and ultimately final decisions made and outcomes provided to customers.

Complaints

We offer a variety of complaints services. Please refer to our complaints webpage which can be located here.

Authorisations

We can assist you with obtaining regulatory licences/permissions from the FCA and/or PRA, whether you’re an already established firm looking to expand, or a start-up business. Please refer to our authorisation’s webpage for more information.

Our experience

A member of our team has previously worked for a large insurance group as a Group Compliance Officer (including enhanced, core and limited scope SM&CR firms). This insurance group was comprised of an insurance underwriter (Value of assets – circa £515 million, value of liabilities – circa £427 million), insurance intermediary (with 1.7 million policies in force), navigating the insurance landscape for the full distribution chain (manufacturer, through to distributor). This individual was responsible for conducting reviews of the insurer, including but not limited to reviewing risk and pricing models, constructs for calculation of premiums, including reviews of last year’s premium, formation and distribution of renewals, and price modelling for mid-term adjustments. They were also responsible for reviewing the insurance intermediary, including but not limited to product governance, sales practices, claims handling and complaints.

Recently, we have supported a large insurer (total liabilities – circa £42 billion), in conducting a whistleblowing review, which included liaising with senior stakeholders, internal audit, HR and other key functions. Our work helped the firm shape its future approach to whistleblowing.

Additionally, we have facilitated the completion of a large life and health insurance firm’s (total liabilities of circa £253 billion) compliance monitoring plans. This included conducting various rapid assurance and thematic based reviews over several years.

We have also recently supported two large commercial insurance firms by training their SMF’s and certified staff on their responsibilities, governance, insurance specific rules and financial crime.